Saudi teen learns sign language to communicate with deaf parents
Tulin Al Khamis began translating to communicate with mum, dad at age 6
Cairo: A Saudi teenage girl has learnt the sign language to help her deaf parents in their everyday life.
Tulin Al Khamis, 13, said she started learning the sign language in her early childhood and began translating for her parents when she was six.
“When I was two, I started to learn basics of the sign language such as mum, dad, I’m hungry and I’m tired. But I began to translate correctly when I became six,” she told Saudi TV Al Arabiya.
“We were on the road and I took my father’s mobile to talk on behalf of him. He was surprised that I was able to communicate in the sign language, but my parents got happy because now there is somebody who can connect them to the outside world,” she recalled.
“When my mother was young, she studied at a boarding school in Riyadh because there were schools for the deaf and the dumb in the city.”
Tulin added that her father had studied at a public school in Buraidah in north-central Saudi Arabia.
“He had a friend who told him about my mother and they later married.”
Tulin has a younger brother, aged six, whom she sometimes helps in communicating with their parents. She is helping him to learn the sign language too.
In an earlier interview with Saudi TV Al Ekhbariya, Tulin said her parents depend on her when they go out and she continues her efforts to master the sign language.